Summary

• This feed will no longer be updated going forward, but pre-releases will still be available!
• See the Brightcove Player Release feed for complete details.

Fixes

• Prevent playback from stalling when seeking into a gap in the buffer.
• Prevent specific network issues from stalling playback when connection recovers.
• Do not log console warnings about realodSourceOnError being registered twice.

Features

• Show DRM configuration issues when DRM is detected but not configured correctly to start playback.

Package Updates

• Update to Video.js HTTP Streaming v2.10.3

Maintenance

• Normalize autoplay-related configuration for playsinline and normalizeAutoplay options.

Features

• Add Sapphire skin to reflect updated Brightcove branding colors.
  • This is an opt-in only change for now and can be configured by setting "skin": "sapphire" in the player's JSON configuration.
  • This skin will become the default in v7.0.0.
• When the new Kollective eCDN plugin is included, the player will no longer automatically load media based on detected IDs (e.g. data-video-id attribute) and will, instead, allow this plugin to manage loading media.

Fixes

• Stop triggering robustness warnings when testing for EME support
• When the player is embedded on pages with malformed query parameters, it will no longer throw an error. Instead, it will behave as if the query string were empty.

Package Updates

• Updated to Video.js 7.14.2
  • Manually opened menus (such as, via a user click) were hiding when the mouse was not focused on the player.
  • Properly return promises from requestFullscreen and exitFullscreen
• Update to VHS 2.9.3
  • Some streams with bad audio data caused playback to fail
  • Fix an issue where switching renditions caused playback to fail

Features

• Exclude the Flash tech if "flash": false is set in the Player configuration.

Fixes

• Let controls autohide on desktop devices with touchscreens.
• Chromecast Receiver's Big Play Button will now use the selected custom colors.
• Prevent being able to click on opened menus on mobile devices when the controls are hidden.

Package Updates

• Updated to Video.js 7.15.0
  • Prevent being able to click on opened menus on mobile devices when the controls are hidden.
• Update to VHS 2.10.0

Features

• Add embedDomain to the social plugin if config.china_proxy_domain has been set
• Fix context_menu configuration to allow false value as expected

Package Updates

• Update to Video.js v7.14.0
• Update to Video.js HTTP Streaming v2.9.1

• Update to Video.js v7.13.1. Notable changes:
  • Add normalizeAutoplay option to treat autoplay: true as autoplay: "play"
  • Add helper classes for 9:16 and 1:1 aspect ratio videos
• Update to Video.js HTTP Streaming v2.9.0. Notable changes:
  • Add an option to override label for 608 and 708 captions
  • do a fast rendition change on fullscreen changes and user actions, see note below
  • Add option to limit how many times the playback engine retries on playlist request errors
• Fix issues with thumbnails and playlists

Rendition changes

As of this release, whenever a user selects a particular rendition via a rendition picker or when switching to or out of fullscreen, the buffer is cleared to switch to the new rendition immediately. This will improve viewer experience as we will immediately switch up to a higher rendition when the view goes fullscreen.

Internet Explorer Support Update

As of this pre-release, Brightcove is no longer actively supporting Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) on any version of Windows. This was announced with the Brightcove Player 6.52.1 release.

Related bug reports and enhancement requests will not be accepted after this date. While we will not intentionally remove IE11 support in any version of Brightcove Player 6.x, we will not be actively testing against it either.

Customers requiring support for IE11 may wish to lock their player to this version. Note that locked players no longer receive new enhancements or bug fixes.

Edge is the recommended Microsoft browser and is fully supported by the Brightcove team.

Features

Edge Playback Authorization Error Messages

This release includes more granular error messages for users of Edge Playback Authorization.

This means when EPA-protected streams encounter issues, users are more likely to see a useful error message instead of the generic MEDIA_ERR_DECODE.

Source Selection Rules

This version adds support for a video_cloud.source_selection_rules configuration. This configuration will allow publishers to provide declarative rules for how the player will filter and sort the list of sources returned from the Playback API.

Note: This configuration only controls the list of sources given to Video.js. It is distinct from the subsequent, internal Video.js logic which determines which available source will play.

Currently, the only supported rule is prefer_mp4, which will allow publishers to filter out non-MP4 sources and, optionally, further sort the resulting list by any numeric property.

Full documentation of this feature will be forthcoming!

Package Updates

• Update to Video.js 7.12.3 from 7.12.2
• Update to Video.js HTTP Streaming 2.8.2 from 2.8.1

• Add support for context_menu.brightcove_branding normalization to contextMenu.brightcoveBranding lowerCamelCase in configuration.
• Update videojs-errors to v4.5.0. Notable changes:
  • Add support for -1 value for player error timeout and backgroundTimeout.
• Update videojs-dock to v2.2.0. Notable changes:
  • Create dock elements on player ready.
  • Add dynamic player element labelledBy and describedBy ARIA attributes.
• Update video.js to v7.12.2. Notable changes:
  • Better text for exit fullscreen.
  • Menus with one item and a title remain visible.
  • Update focus styles on selected MenuItem.
  • Better Playback Rate control for screen readers.
• Update @videojs/http-streaming to 2.8.1.

• Add an initial_bandwidth configuration. This is a value set in bits per second that represents an initial bandwidth estimate for use with ABR algorithmns in the playback engine of the player.
• Add a umd configuration. By default, the player script is a Universal Module Definition (UMD) script. This means that it binds itself to RequireJS/AMD, CommonJS, or just globally depending on what's available. When this new option is set to false this removes the UMD wrapper and only binds the script to the global namespace. This is useful for sites using RequireJS but that do not wish load the Brightcove Player via RequireJs.
• Update @videojs/http-streaming to v2.8.0. Notable changes:
  • Improve DASH live stream manifest updates.

• Update to Video.js 7.12.1. Notable changes:
  • Update responsive control bar in fullscreen.
  • Add a volume tooltip.
  • Improve switching of audio tracks.
• Update to Video.js HTTP Streaming 2.7.1. Notable changes:
  • Support audio only manifests, particularly DRM-protected streams.
  • Improve time to first frame on live playlists.
  • Improve support for high bitrate renditions.
• Allow player timeout errors to be configured separately for foreground and background playback, with a higher timeout for background playback.
• Don't cache results of getAutoplayConditions().
• Make sure that endscreen doesn't trigger on iOS after ads.

• Update to Video.js HTTP Streaming 2.6.4
  • Improve handling of QUOTA_EXCEEDED_ERR

• Update to Video.js HTTP Streaming 2.6.3
• Allow blocking robot indexing of player HTML page via block_robots

• Update to Video.js 7.11.6
  • Fix live UI for DVR not showing up for streams on Safari
• Make sure that buttons in the dock, like the Share button, are visible when tabbed into
• Update multilingual metadata on playlist item changes
• Add crossOrigin attribute when text tracks are used on any iOS browser
• Allow native context menu to be toggled via right click

• Update to @videojs/http-streaming@2.6.2](https://github.com/videojs/http-streaming/releases/tag/v2.6.2)
  • This adds support for @endNumber in DASH streams
• Escape player name in more places
• Add application setter and getter to analytics plugin

• Update to @videojs/http-streaming@2.6.1](https://github.com/videojs/http-streaming/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md#261-2021-02-19)
  • When preload=none is set, we will no longer download any data from the stream until playback is requested by the user or via autoplay.
  • Handle HLS streams with ProgramDateTime properly.
  • Improve an issue with Live DASH playback.
• Escape HTML in Video Name when creating the info modal.
• Improve playlist loading times on IE11.
• Add crossorigin if text tracks are being used and we're playing back on Safari.
• Do a case-insensitive check for multilingual metadata comparisons.
• Make sure that the final video_engagment event gets triggered in more cases

• Update to Video.js 7.11.5
  • Fixes a couple issues where seeking on iOS may not seek to the correct position

• Update to Video.js 7.11.4
  • Fix an issue where times in the control bar would be appended instead of replaced on IE11

• Fix an issue with the progress bar showing up for non-DVR live streams in Safari.
• Update to Video.js 7.11.2
• Update to @videojs/http-streaming@2.5.0

• Fix an issue with rollover handling for long running live streams.
• Fix an issue with rendition switching and seeking over discontinuities when the stream has large PTS/DTS values.
• Fix an issue where, for streams with more than one playlist, after all playlists failed to load, the player would switch between the available playlists as fast as possible until one returned. Instead, in this case, playlists requests are delayed to prevent excessive playlist downloads.

• Fix issue with EPA DRM source selection in Chromium Edge so Widevine is now preferred by default
• Add support for allowPlayreadyInChromiumEdge catalog plugin option to allow defining DRM source selection behavior in Chromium Edge

• Update to Video.js 7.11
  • Trigger a languagechange event when the langauge is set via player.language()
• Update to @videojs/http-streaming@2.4.0
  • Include preliminary support for 708 captions.
  • Don't include really small segments in bandwidth and throughput calculations.
  • Better rendition switches around discontinuities.
• Multilingual Metadata related changes
  • Update video title and description when the player language changes if Multilingual Metadata is available for the Catalog items.
  • Fix a potential non-fatal error condition when a non-Video Cloud playlist was in use and catalog.getMetadata was called.
• Fix an issue where DRM content that began with clear segments could not play.
• Fix an issue where rendition switches that occurred immediately following an engagement event would cause engagement tracking to stop.

Bug Fixes

• Fix an issue where some caption cues were missing from in-band manifests where multiple cues had the same start and end times.
  • Update to http-streaming 2.3.1
• Limit automatically enabling captions to when Multilingual Metadata is enabled

Bug Fixes

• Update to @videojs/http-streaming@2.3.0
  • This fixes a bug where in-manifest captions would not show up properly and be removed from the captions menu.

Support for Multilingual Metadata

Multilingual Metadata is a feature of the CMS API that allows you to provide video metadata such as the title and description in multiple languages. If set, these variants are included in Playback API response that the player uses.

From 6.46.0 forward, when the player loads a new video from a Playback API response, it will look for an entry in the variants (if any) for one that matches the player's language. If a match is found, that variant will be used in the player UI in the "dock" where the title and description are displayed.

Additionally, any subtitles or captions track that matches the variant language will be selected as the default (unless one is explicitly marked as default already).

catalog.getMetadata Method

As part of this feature, a new utility method was added to the player: catalog.getMetadata, which can be used to get an object or array representation of the current video or playlist metadata.

It can be given an options object with up to two possible properties:

lang

This option allows you to get a representation of video or playlist metadata with the matching variant merged into the top-level metadata object.

For example, assume you have a video with metadata in English by default and a Spanish variant. A simplified set of metadata may look something like:

{
  "title": "Title of a Video",
  "variants": [{
    "language": "es",
    "title": "Título de un video"
  }, {
    // This "null" variant is added by the player to represent the default field values!
    language: null,
    "title": "Title of a Video"
  }]
}

Given that, you can retrieve a Spanish representation by:

player.catalog.getMetadata({lang: 'es'});

Which will return something like this where variants are still included, but the top-level title matches the Spanish variant:

{
  "title": "Título de un video",
  "variants": [{
    "language": "es",
    "title": "Título de un video"
  }, {
    language: null,
    "title": "Title of a Video"
  }]
}

In this way, you can easily get the current video metadata as it should be represented for the user's current player language:

var metadata = player.catalog.getMetadata({
  lang: player.language()
});

With that, you can do anything you need with metadata properties knowing that they'll be in the player's language if a variant was available for it!

type

This can be 'video' (the default) or 'playlist'.

When type: 'video' (or no value) is given, metadata for the currently selected video will be returned - regardless of whether the player is playing a single video or playlist.

When type: 'playlist' is given and a playlist is in use, metadata for the entire playlist - an array - will be returned. If no playlist is available, it will fall back to returning the current video; so, it's a good idea to check the return value type in this case (e.g., using Array.isArray)!

This option can be combined with the lang option; so, for example, you can retrieve a translated representation of a playlist with a call like:

var playlistMetadata = player.catalog.getMetadata({
  lang: player.language(),
  type: 'playlist'
});

Bug Fixes

• Fix cases where player.language() returned undefined by default.
• Fix a case where catalog parameter defaults could conflict between players on the same page.
  • This was unlikely to have affected anyone except, perhaps, in rare cases where players from multiple accounts and of the same version were on the same page.

Bug Fixes

• Upgrade to @videojs/http-streaming 2.2.0, addressing some notable issues that were discovered with 2.1.0 (in Brightcove Player 6.45.0):
  • Audio-only streams did not play back properly
  • SSAI streams would time out after the first midroll
• If we can find it, show the DRM plugin version in the player info modal

Bug Fixes

• Fix failures with previews and file URLs with query parameters
• Upgrade to Video.js 7.9.3

Features

• Update to VHS 2.1.0
  • The inclusion of VHS 2.1.0 in the Brightcove Player is a huge milestone for us. This major update to our playback engine sets us up for many future enhancements including better Live DASH support and low-latency streaming. It represents the culmination of many months of behind the scenes effort, testing, and refinement. Congratulations to everyone who contributed to delivering VHS 2!

Bug Fixes

• Update to Video.js 7.9.2
• Fix a regression in support for language attribute on the video embed.
  • This use case is deprecated. It will now log a warning in the browser console. language is not a valid attribute for the <video> or <video-js> element!

Features

• Add support IMA CSAI preroll with SSAI via special configuration (documentation coming soon)
• Update to Video.js 7.9.1

Bug Fixes

• Fix intermittent initialization failures on Chromecast devices
• Fix player controls being unresponsive on iPhones when leaving fullscreen
• Fix a regression in support for the application ID
• Fix a regression in support for an "hls": true JSON configuration.
  • This configuration didn't actually do anything previously, but a recent change caused it to break players that did have it.

Bug Fixes

• Only add thumbnails tracks if videojs-thumbnails is in use. This resolves some harmless but unsightly error messages that were being logged for some users.

Because this is a small fix, we plan on promoting it to full release tomorrow.

Bug Fixes

• Add a workaround for captions not displaying on native fullscreen on latest versions of iOS/iPhone
• Address an issue passing SSAI parameters to the Chromecast receiver

Bug Fixes

• Fix detection of default language in iframe embeds

Features

• Support VTT thumbnails URLs in Playback API responses
• Update to Video.js 7.8.1 and @videojs/http-streaming 1.13.2
• Send video_engagement event when new rendition is chosen

Bug Fixes

• Address issues with autoplay detection on iOS and Android
• Consider protocol when selecting thumbnail WebVTT
• Make sure we always send play_request when we have a preroll ad

Bug Fixes

• Fix a regression in language handling introduced in 6.38.0

Chores

• Update @videojs/http-streaming to 1.12.3
• Update videojs-errors to 4.3.2

Features

• Add Arabic language (ar) support

Bug Fixes

• Don't fail build on files with query parameters and special characters

Notes

This Player version combined with the Chromecast Receiver plugin v1.3.1 should resolve playback issues on Chromecast devices.

This is a maintenance-only release with no functional changes.

Features

• Add support for Edge Playback Authorization

Bug Fixes

• Fix issues with remote files that are only delivered with gzip compression
• Update Video.js HTTP Streaming to v1.11.3, which fixes issues with quality levels, live startup failures, and more.

Bug Fixes

• Resolve an issue with reporting engagement when certain playback rates are set by the user.
• Update to Video.js 7.7.4